Commerzbank AG is a global banking and financial services company founded in 1870 with its headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany.

Commerzbank is Germany's second-largest bank, holding a nationwide network of branch offices, numerous offshore branch offices and representations in more than 50 countries globally which employed a total of 51,782 employees as at June 2014.

Commerzbank was founded in 1870 by individual and merchant bankers in Hamburg, Germany. Ship owner C. Woermann was the first chairman of the super-visory board of Commerz- und Disconto-Bank from 1870.[1] (Commerz- und Disconto-Bank Hamburg 1874 pictured (right)).

The bank grew through a series of over 50 mergers, acquisitions and restructures in the following period through hyperinflation and the accompanied difficulties in the German economy. In 1940, the name Commerzbank Aktiengesellschaft, by which the bank was generally known, was officially adopted.

With the division of Europe after WW2, three regional banks were united in 1958 to form Commerzbank AG, which had its headquarters in Düsseldorf. Commerzbank stepped up its economic financing activities and started expanding around the globe. From 1970 onwards, the bank's administrative activities were shifted to Frankfurt am Main, which has been its legal domicile since 1990.[2]

Commerzbank suffered reversals in a disastrous foray into investment banking in the first half decade of the 2000s and eventually shut down its Commerzbank Securities investment banking unit run by Mehmet Dalman and Roman Schmidt after Chairman Klaus-Peter Müller labelled it a "problem child" and a review by consulting firm Mercer Oliver Wyman which concluded that Commerzbank Securities lacked a viable business model.[3][4][5][6] What was left of Commerzbank Securities was folded into a division of the commercial bank called Corporates and Markets.

Further mergers, acquisitions and restructures saw the group grow to servicing over 4 million customers in 1998, 6 million customers in 2001 and 15 million post the Global Financial Crisis oriented takeover of Dresdner Bank from Allianz for €5.5 billion in 2008.

For more than a decade Commerzbank was involved in laundering hundreds of billions of dollars out of Iran, Sudan, and Myanmar, against US sanctions.[7] Commerzbank agreed to pay $1.5 billion in fines and dismiss several employees for their role in laundering $253 billion, and for helping the Japanese company Olympus Corporation orchestrate accounting fraud.[8][9]